In a color photographic light-sensitive material, when the light-sensitive material is exposed to light and thereafter subjected to color-development, the resultant oxidized color-developing agent reacts with a coupler, to form a dye image.
The color-development is attained, for example, by dipping an exposed light-sensitive material in an aqueous alkaline solution (a developing solution) in which a color-developing agent is dissolved. However, this technique have many problems, for example, a problem that the developing solution tends to be deteriorated with the lapse of time and problems concerning treatments of developing solution wastes.
As one measure to solve above problems, a method wherein an aromatic primary amine developing agent or its precursor is built in the hydrophilic colloid layer of a light-sensitive material is proposed. Further, a method wherein a sulfonylhydrazine-type developing agent is built in the hydrophilic colloid layer of a light-sensitive material is proposed. Examples of these include methods described, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 803 783, JP-B-58-14671 (“JP-B” means examined Japanese patent publication), European Patent Nos. 545 491(A1) and 565 165(A1).
However, even these methods cannot attain satisfactory color formation when color-developed; and there is the problem of storage stability of the light-sensitive material.
In the fields of silver halide photographic light-sensitive materials, a so-called color diffusion transfer method in which a diffusible dye is formed imagewise on a light-sensitive material and the image is transferred and fixed to an image-receiving material, to form a color image, is a known technique, and many proposals concerned this have been made. In these methods, a compound (a preformed dye) obtained by causing an image-forming dye, which is beforehand colored to have nondiffusibility (the compound will be referred to as a colorant hereinafter), is generally used. Therefore, when the colorant is added to the same layer containing a silver halide emulsion, an undesired drop in the sensitivity to exposure is caused, because of a filter effect of the dye moiety. In order to improve these drawbacks, a so-called coupling system is proposed in U.S. Pat. No. 4469773 and JP-B-63-36487 in which system a dye is formed by a coupling reaction between an oxidized product of a developing agent, which is produced as a function of the developing of silver halide, and a coupler. However, the color-developing agent described therein has a difficulty in the compatibility of the storage stability and the activity of the coupling reaction and a difficulty in modifying both the color-developing agent and the coupler to those having resistance to diffusion.
Novel color-developing agents are proposed in JP-A-09-152702 (“JP-A” means unexamined published Japanese patent application) and JP-A-09-152705. In these methods, however, sufficient color-forming property is not obtained yet. Also, whether or not there are problems concerning the hue and color image stability of a dye to be formed.
Hitherto, color diffusion transfer photography, using an azo dye image-forming compound that can supply an azo dye having a diffusibility different from the image-forming compound itself, as a result of development under a basic condition, has been widely known. For example, image-forming compounds that release a yellow dye are described in JP-A-52-7727 and JP-A-54-79031, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,473,672. Also, image-forming compounds that release a magenta dye are described, for example, in JP-A-49-114424, JP-A-4-331954, and U.S. Pat. No. 3,932,380
However, these yellow and magenta dye image-forming compounds have insufficient spectral characteristics of the resultant dye resulting in problems in color reproducibility, or they have low fastness to light, heat, air, chemicals, and the like. Thus, yellow or magenta dye image-forming compounds satisfying all performance requirements have not yet been found, and further improvement has been desired.